


Drawing

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26622562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: Nate doesn't draw anymore.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Drawing

“These are really cool,” Lita says as she leafs through one of Nate’s notebooks that covers the JSA. She’s got an entire stack of them on the desk. He should really tell her not to go through people’s stuff, but it looks like that’s another trait she gets from Mick. She picks up another sketchbook, this one with Nate’s name written on the front in awkward, blocky letters. “Wow, how old are some of these?”

“Old.” That one looks like it’s from when Nate was seven. It had been a gift from one of his aunts. “I thought you were supposed to be doing your homework, not looking through my stuff.”

“ _Art_ homework. We have to copy someone else’s style.” Lita smirks as she flips past a particularly awkward drawing that Nate thinks was one of his early attempts at a realistic cat. “Everyone else paired up with someone in the class and when I told my dad about it, he said that you draw. And all the articles about Heyworld mention that you drew it in a magic diary. My dad showed me the diary. It’s cool.”

So that was where it had ended up after Heyworld. Nate had wondered what had happened to it.

Lita holds up one of the books. “Are there any others? This is the last one and the last page is dated before Heyworld.”

Nate didn’t want to talk about _that_. He picks up the closest book – a heavy book on Greek mythology – and shrugs. “I don’t’ know. Sorry, Lita, I promised Behrad that I’d help him out with something in the engine room and I’m already running late. Good luck with your homework.”

**

Nate can’t remember a time when he didn’t draw.

He remembers drawing by flashlight after his dad finished telling him stories at night: the JSA fighting monsters, felt-tip and pencil and crayon images of a grandfather he would never meet. And, later, sketches of the fights there were no photographs of, their faces copied from the few photographs he’d been able to find.

Drawings of creatures that he’d thought had only existed in the books on mythology that Nate had stolen from his dad’s office when he’d grown bored of reading the same books and comics. Dragons and minotaurs and werewolves.

He’d done it all through grade school and high school as well, much to the exasperation of his teachers.

_“Nathaniel, why does your essay have a sketch of the president on the back of it?”_

_“I know that I asked for diagrams in the last assignment, Nathaniel, but it really wasn’t necessary for this one.”_

Drawing had been something Nate could do anywhere, just like reading. He could draw while everyone else was in gym class. It kept his gaze away from the window, kept his envy locked somewhere down in the pit of his stomach where it could only surface when no one else was around. The pencil moved across the page slowly, trying to bring the details from Nate’s mind to the paper. His mom. His dad. His grandfather. His many cousins. The JSA.

He’d drawn a lot in hospital. He’d learned to draw with his left hand without ever having to move his right arm, used to having to keep it still or risk pulling at wires or needles. He’d even had books that he’d sketched in whenever he’d been getting an infusion.

College had been harder. Nate had kept to the edge of the parties whenever anything other than drinking was involved after the first year – a fall from a ladder, a bleed that his doctor had described as severe, and Nate hadn’t been able to summon the bravery to agree the next time that someone else from the frat suggested something risky – and drawn what he’d seen instead. He’d sketched idly on the back of exams, between notes on battles and presidents and kings.

_“Mr Heywood, perhaps your talents would be better served in the art department.”_

There had been years of odd jobs, accidentally managing to become a teacher when a college friend had said he’d be good at it and then, later, when the same college friend had remembered Nate’s interest in heroes through time and had called him up with a job offer. And he had turned the sketches into part of the module, getting the students to draw as well.

Nate hadn’t been stupid. He’d known what the professors and the other teachers had said about him behind his back.

_“Yeah, the history professor who does the module on the depiction of heroes throughout history. The weird one.”_

_“You know what they say: those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.”_

And then the Legends had happened.

Nate had sketched poorly described versions of their faces, taken details from depictions in history. It had turned out that they hadn’t been very accurate, so he’d drawn them again when he’d met each of them. He’d sketched the JSA after he’d met them, capturing the details that the photographs had missed, adding portraits of each of them to his research on them. He’d kept going afterwards, adding sketches of everyone whose face he could remember to the books, until he didn’t just have the JSA and the Legends in them, but all the other heroes he’d met, Kuasa, Leo, Nora, Ava and Gary.

And then one day he’d just… Stopped.

**

“My dad says that I need to find out if I upset you because he doesn’t want to have to deal with it if I did,” is the closest thing to a greeting that Nate gets when the door to his quarters slide open. “Well, he said ‘fix it or you’re not time travelling for a month.’”

“That sounds like Mick.”

Nate’s been sitting at his desk since he left the library, staring at the same sheet of paper that he’s been avoiding for months.

“This is the last one I did,” Nate says, smoothing out the piece of paper. It’s Zari – _his_ Zari, not the one who’s still on the ship – sitting on the edge of his bed with her legs crossed. She’d been talking about all the things she couldn’t wait to do now that she was no longer in the totem. And Nate, for the first time in a year, had picked up the closest notebook and pen and started drawing. “Months ago. I hadn’t drawn anything for a while before that.”

And that had been the last time he'd drawn anything. Before Zari had to leave. Before Charlie had left. Before Sara had gone missing.

“You don’t draw anymore,” Lita says, stepping into the room to get a better look at the drawing. She puts her sketchbook down.

“No,” Nate says quietly, his gaze drifting to Lita’s own book. She’s done a good job of copying the way he draws and even where he draws. She’s done small sketches of every single member of the team, dotted around the edges of the page. “It’s a long story,” he adds.

All those people, all those sketches. And, after, when Nate had made it back to his quarters with the eyeliner still smudged around his eyes and his nail polish only just beginning to chip, he had realised something. His dad. His grandfather. Amaya. Zari. Charlie. Ray. Nora. Jax. Stein.

At the end of the day, all Nate is left with are books upon books full of sketches of the dead and the gone.


End file.
